Why MT doesn't believe in this.

[Yanoda]

I still don't believe any of your mombo jumbo Yanoda. I believe that no man on Earth is supposed to know all. That is also done by design.

Fine, ignore all the information and sources I provided to help you understand the scientific concept of the process of Evolution while you just make claims and assumptions with no evidences to back your claims/arguments.

Here is an evolutionists view:
How did Earth form? Just happen by chance
How did life develop? Just happen by chance
Why do we have hundreds of religions with different views? They're all crazy
Why does the devil exist? Because..... oh wait you believe in the Devil but not God?

You clearly asked how did the earth form, not why. I answered appropriately.
Don't make claims of things I didn't say in your arguments Homestar.

Concerning the watchmaker analogy: .
First 2 minutes is about quote mining and the rest is about the design-designer concept.

Thanks for simply pasting a definition. I still don't agree that it applies since I was not speaking of all evidence. Read my earlier post again as it shows what I meant

Or God has always been in existence. It's something that is hard for our minds to comprehend. Just because you can't prove that God does exist with "hard evidence" or logical theory, doesn't mean he could not possibly exist

I stand by my argumentum ad ignorantiam - Argument from ignorance claim.

Why do we have hundreds of religions with different views? They're all crazy

Very ignorant of you to make that claim. Though if you call them crazy for their religious view, does that mean you also call yourself crazy?
Why do we have hundreds of religions with different views? People developed different cultures and views. Respectively, they developed their own form of religions to suit their culture.

Your very ignorant if you think I was talking about myself. Even you pointed out that I was writing what a evolutionist response would be. You can't twist words to make your own arguments, use them in the context they are given

Ah OK I see what went wrong there. Thought you claimed that other religions are crazy. No, Evolutionists do not view the religious as crazies. Note that there are Religious individuals that are Evolutionists. They just understand that faith does not go in-hand with evidence based science.

Why does the devil exist? Never said I believe in the devil. Though if you believe in God(s) created everything, then it/they also created all the evils in the world.

I believe that God created the being, who by that beings own choice, rebelled and chose an evil course, and thus became the Devil. He is responsible for his evils. Humans who commit evil here do so of their own volition. The world and the humans on it are subjected to the influence of the Devil. We have free will, we can choose to ignore or embrace that influence

You know that the same can apply if God and the Devil are out of the equation. We alone are responsible for our actions. Not God or the Devil.
Darth Crater explained that well.

[quote="Col. Homestar"]No I believe the universe is well tailored for humans living on earth, and the fact that inside of this universe whcih alone would not support human life, we find a planet which does....[quote]
The problem is that the Earth would have to have the initial conditions to support life for us to exist there in the first place. If it didn't, we wouldn't be there.

[quote="Col. Homestar"]It's different because many refuse to believe in God because they feel he is responsible for the evil we see today. They assume he is not going to do anything about it. Knowing the origins of evil allows someone to accept the situation we find ourselves in today. In a world surrounded by the influence of the devil.[quote]
Where is the statistics that back up that claim? As far as know, many do not believe in a God because they do not believe in it, very definition of Atheist.
So God isn't evil?
Bible states God killed off almost the entire human race. Which is very unlikely based on current scientific evidence.
God gives us free will to worship it or not, but we get punished with hell if we don't. Yeah! Free will!
Isaiah 45:7 (King James bible) I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.


Quotes are messed up...

Cheers

Yanoda

[THEWULFMAN]

I'm too tired to read everything that has been posted, and I REALLY need to go sleep, so I loosely browsed. My grammar might also be crap from being tired, sorry in advance.
I saw one thing that demands my attention. I don't know who said it first, or why, but it doesn't er. There is no evidence whatsoever that Earth is the only habitable planet in the universe, on the contrary it's very likely we're not the only life carrying planet. We use to think our star system was the only one with planets. Then we found 51 Pegasi b. The first planet to be found orbiting a main sequence star, outside of the Sol System. We had found a planet orbiting a plusar before then, but for reasons I don't want to go in right now, that barely counts for this current topic(it's likely no life can be found on a pulsar planet, ever).

It was a gas giant, similar to Jupiter. Except it orbited much closer to its star than Jupiter orbits our star, Sol. We coined the term, "Hot Jupiter" as we found gas giants orbiting stars way closer than we thought possible. We learned several things. The Sol System isn't unique, in that it has planets, and we also learned planets might form a lot easier than we thought.

But for awhile, we found nothing but gas giants. They're big, and relatively easy to see. We did find a few very large rocky planets, but none similar in size to Earth. We called these large rocks Super Earths, for their large size.

However, thanks to the beautiful Kepler telescope that NASA launched in 2009, we have now found Earth sized planets (some of which in the habitable zone of their star). And we're only searching a very tiny portion of the Milky Way (this is the Kepler's greatest, and weakest feature). It's great, because it provides us with clear images, showing Earth sized planets. It's a weakness because we're not getting the big picture. But it's still amazing.

Lets say there are 300,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. The estimate is between 200 and 400 billion, so lets cut the average. Let's say 1% of those stars have planets (which is a number way too low), that is 3,000,000,000 stars with planets. Lets say 0.001% of those planet-bearing star systems have a planet capable of supporting life (which is, again, a number that is way too low to be accurate). That's 30,000 planets capable of supporting life. It would be irresponsible and narrow minded to think that Earth is the only planet capable of supporting life. Maybe not human life, but I would imagine there are hundreds of thousands of planets with life in them in this universe. Even if it is single celled organisms, it still counts.

Maybe we're the only planet with sentient life. Maybe. But there is simply no way we're the only ones with life on it. And that is faith. Similar to my faith in my god and lord Jesus. I don't make much of a distinction between science and God. They are one and the same thing to me. There are a very strict set of laws that physics do not break, I'd like to think someone set those laws. Science supersedes religion, when it comes to things like the origins of the universe, Earth, and Man. I still believe God is science. As Yanoda said, I am a religious individual that is an Evolutionist.

There is nothing to be gained from the extremes of anything. Hardcore religious zealots and hardcore atheists both have it wrong, in my opinion. It's my opinion, take it or leave it.

[Hobo]

Im not really reading all this, but I think it's something about religion and evolution. I for one whole-heatedly believe in both, and I kind of laugh at those who doubt evolution. But here's something interesting I found whilst browsing the internet.

The Transcendental Argument for God

The TAG is a transcendental argument that attempts to prove that God is the precondition of all human knowledge and experience, by demonstrating the impossibility of the contrary; in other words, that logic, reason, or morality cannot exist without God. The argument proceeds as follows:

1. If there is no god (most often the entity God, defined as the god of the Christian bible), knowledge is not possible.
2. Knowledge is possible (or some other statement pertaining to logic or morality).
3. Therefore a god exists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_argument_for_the_existence_of_God

Also- someone had brought up a question that didn't get answered earlier, I think it was about how in the bible, the moon, sun and stars all came after plants appeared. The only way I can make sense of this is that it wasn't that the Celestial bodies in out Solar system were created, it was that they appeared. When Earth was still cooling, it was covered in mist, hence why no one could see the moon or sun. It was after the mist began to part did the objects in the sky appear.

[Ariel]

And I thought this thread was dead lol

Since I never chimed in, let me give my two cents. I am not going to argue, because we've already seen that it's pretty much pointless here. I am not going to try to refute what others have said, because that would take WAY too long. I simply am going to tell you why I have CHOSEN to believe in creation...intelligent design...whatever you may call it.

1. The math just doesn't add up. For this part, allow me to quote a paper I wrote during high school (if you want the bibliography, I can PM it to you...I also do autographs ):

Russel F. Doolittle, Ph. D., starts his article in Scientists Confront Creationism by saying “One of the favorite creationist attacks on the concept of biological evolution concentrates on the improbability of various aspects of a spontaneous origin of life on earth” (Laurie, 85), and he is correct. All of life exemplifies the imaginative hand of God; “It seems screamingly obvious that the world of living things is the result of an intent or a designer assembling order according to some master plan. Even Einstein said “I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world”, suggesting a creator…” (Smith and Sullivan, 76). Yet evolutionists expect us to “…resist that illusion [that nature and the universe were designed]” (Smith and Sullivan, 83) and to “…keep our minds open to the possibility that undirected, random processes can also generate order, even in the domain of living things” (Smith and Sullivan, 69). The problem with this thinking is that, when considered in a purely mathematical light, the chances of life coming about by random happenings are impossible. In his book Scientific Creationism, Dr. Henry Morris, Ph. D., founder of the Institute for Creation Research and well-known creationist author, does an excellent job of illustrating this point in a way that cannot be debated.
Let us suppose that the smallest, least complex system in the universe is composed of 100 parts. If there is only one combination that will produce life, there is a one in 10^158 probability that a randomly selected combination will work. If the 100 parts were linked, shuffled, and re-linked one billion times every second for 30 billion years (which is over three times the estimated age of the entire universe), an infinitely small probability still exists (1 in 10^53) that life would have been produced. This is equivalent to one chance out of one hundred million billion billion billion billion billion! (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 60-61). However, “Research sponsored by NASA… has shown that the simplest type of protein molecule… is composed of… at least 400 linked amino acids, and each amino acid is a specific combination of four or five basic chemical elements, and each chemical element is a unique assemblage of protons, electrons, and neutrons” (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 61). When considered in this light, the chances of life evolving by random processes are essentially a mathematical impossibility; life could not have either begun or evolved through chance.
Ever since the publication of Charles Darwin’s book Origin of Species, the scientific majority has advocated that the main “propellant” of evolution is beneficial, random mutations. Experts expect us to believe that mutations can further the evolutionary process when all experimental evidence explicitly shows otherwise.
Creation scientists have observed that virtually all mutations would be eliminated from the general population by natural selection. “…while variations… do arise randomly, which [animals] will survive will not be random. This is because the selective environment has certain conditions that must be met… Selection doesn’t randomly determine which [animals] will survive and which ones won’t. Rather, it simply evaluates the fitness of each individual, allowing some to reproduce and barring others. Selection selects for the better suited and against the les well suited, and its effects are certainly not random” (Smith an Sullivan, 82). At sometime during the evolutionary process, there is certain to be a step which will make the organism less suited to its environment, causing death and a halt to the process. A helpful mutation might indeed be preserved and spread by natural selection, yet “The phenomenon of a truly beneficial mutation…has yet to be documented” (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 56). H.J. Muller has said “the great majority of mutations, certainly well over 99%, are harmful in some way…” (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 55). The chances of just one beneficial mutation happening are almost nonexistent!
Evolution is not all about one successful mutation, however; if this were true, evolution would have a much better chance of success. The truth is that for evolution to be able to work, a string of literally billions of beneficial mutations has to come about without one wrong step. “ In order to continue toward higher and higher order… each trial step would have to be immediately beneficial; there could be no failures or backward steps” (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 63). Considering how rare one good mutation is, one can see the extreme problem with this thinking. “ The chance of a million beneficial mutations happening in order is one in 10^300,000 (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 69). This number is too large to humanly comprehend! Not only is a good mutation extremely rare, but the chances of an adequate amount of these occurring without one wrong move are essentially zero (or nought, for you Britons out there ).

Evolution by natural selection and mutations is impossible, and the math indefatigably supports this proof.

2. Despite what others have said previously, order does indeed lead to the logical conclusion that there was design somewhere in the process. Honestly, the best example I can give has to do with computers and DNA.

In the study of computer code, there is a rule that a code never arises in and of itself. There HAS to be a designer for an ORDER-ly, working code to come about. Computer codes show a very high level of design, thought, order, logic, and purpose...things which by their very nature necessitate an intelligent being to be produced. Case in point: this very web site. Someone had a purpose for it...someone designed it in a logical, orderly manner...and someone worked hard to get it to where it is now. This web site did not just spontaneously come into being out of a jumble of 1's and 0's floating around on the web: SOMEONE arranged the information for our benefit.

Now let us look at a single strand of human DNA: the marvel of nano-biology. The coding for making an entire human being, contained in a package smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, and containing less storage space than is needed to run Windows XP (750 MB in the average DNA strand compared to 1,500 MB for XP). Mankind, with all his knowledge and technological prowess, could not come close to achieving such compactness of so much information in such a small container.

To compound the math even more, we have to take into account that computer code only uses two bases--1's and 0's--whereas DNA has FOUR bases--adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine. Correct me if I'm wrong--my high school Algebra II seems like forever ago--but I believe that this raises the number of combinations by a factor of four (as in "to the fourth power"). Such complexity simply astounds the mind, and it is found as close as our own bodies. We are perfectly engineered, well-formed machines, right down to the "code" that gives us our beings. What is even more awe-inspiring is that this "code" is self-healing and self-replicating: things that a computer coder could only dream of accomplishing.

When we see a working computer code--for example,the code used to make this web site work--we of course quickly come to the logical conclusion that an intelligent being created and ordered it into its present condition. How arrogant and close-minded, then, is it to take even a casual glance at DNA, the "code" of life itself, in all its super-human complexity and structure, and say that it had to have "appeared," with no outside forces involved? It is, in my opinion, nothing but willful blindness to what is staring us in the face.

3. The former two proofs had nothing to do with things of the mind and heart, the seat of emotions and thought. They were hard facts. Nothing "religious" whatsoever about them. Now, allow me to share the biggest reason why I believe in intelligent design:

I do not have enough faith to believe in evolution.

Yes, you just read that right; that was not a typo. I do not have enough faith to believe in evolution.

Now, say what you will--and I know I will get some strong responses to that statement--but, at some point, we are ALL exhibiting faith in our decision. Neither you nor I was there when the universe and all therein was formed, so at some point we have to take it by faith. Whether you believe in evolution or creation, you are exhibiting faith in someone. For creationists, we have faith that the Word of God, the Bible, tells us the truth about the origins of life and er; for the evolutionist, he has faith in the scientist that theorizes and studies origins. But I digress: back to what I was saying.

When I look at the world around me, I see order and I see design. I see beauty in the colors plastered across the skies at sunrise and sunset; I see power in the hurricanes and tornadoes that people endanger their lives to research; and I see infinity in the star-spangled night sky, with its myriad starts, planets, and nebulae. I would rather believe--it makes more sense to me--that an all-powerful, transcendent, super-natural being of some kind--whether he be the God of the Christians or not--created the universe and its marvels. Even the smallest life-form on earth exhibits extraordinary order, structure, and design, testifying of a creator somewhere. The Bible says "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork (Psalm 19:1)...For the invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20)."

Call me weak...call me brain-washed...call me what you may, you cannot convince me that there is not a Creator-God. I have seen too much; I know too much; I have experienced too much in my own life for anything to dissuade me from knowing that God, my Creator, is real.

So there you have it: with all due respect to MT, this is why Ariel DOES believe in this.

[Ariel]

So, basically, trying to bring absolute certainty into a discussion is pointless. Just consider the evidence or lack thereof, use that to work out your favored hypothesis and your confidence in it. Then, if your confidence is high enough go ahead and treat it as certain.

So the correct term would then be "agnostic," not "atheist," would it not?
Do you know that a good translation for the Greek word "agnostic" is ignoramus? Just saying.

[Darth Crater]

Hobo: I disagree with point #1 of that argument. Specifically, from the Wiki article:

2. Knowledge does not exist if Our Conclusions are ultimately the direct result of purely random, uncoordinated and undependable accidents.

This does not seem to be obvious, or to follow from any previous reasoning.

Don't have time to read through your longer post at the moment, Ariel. One observation - I agree completely that the universe is beautiful. I just don't see design in it anywhere.

About terms - "atheist" would be the more correct of the two (to describe me at least), given that the body of evidence I've considered pushes me into "certain" territory. Specifically, I do not believe there is a "deity" intervening in any way in the visible universe. If I find any evidence otherwise, I'll update my beliefs to fit what I discover.

[Col. Hstar]

First off. Yanoda, a lot of what you were saying mirrors what Darth Crater says. I already responded, so please read that one so I don’t have to re-post. As far as your video, I refuse to watch something called “why people laugh at creationists.”
Next!

Why does the devil exist? Never said I believe in the devil. Though if you believe in God(s) created everything, then it/they also created all the evils in the world.

I believe that God created the being, who by that beings own choice, rebelled and chose an evil course, and thus became the Devil. He is responsible for his evils. Humans who commit evil here do so of their own volition. The world and the humans on it are subjected to the influence of the Devil. We have free will, we can choose to ignore or embrace that influence

You know that the same can apply if God and the Devil are out of the equation. We alone are responsible for our actions. Not God or the Devil.

This part I didn’t understand. That may be why atheists don’t believe in God, but not everyone is an atheist. I did not state that was how everyone felt. D Crater asked why my beliefs about the devil helps…..that’s why. Come on Yanoda, I should have to be getting on you to read the whole statement and keep it in context. Statistics, you need statistic to know that’s one of the reasons people don’t believe in God, you’re even using it in an argument right below this line. You deflect an argument that you have no response to by asking for evidence, don’t be hypocritical.
Next!

So God isn't evil?
Bible states God killed off almost the entire human race. Which is very unlikely based on current scientific evidence.
God gives us free will to worship it or not, but we get punished with hell if we don't. Yeah! Free will!
Isaiah 45:7 (King James bible) I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Just to forewarn you. You are attempting to make a statement about God which I will answer using scriptures from the Bible. Your using a scripture to lend weight to your claim that God is evil, so I will respond using the scriptures. If it’s good enough for your arguments, is good enough for mine. I just don’t want a tirade about how the bible is unreliable.

First God does not punish with hell. There is no hell, only man’s common grave. When someone dies, they cease to exists, they don’t think, they are unconscious as if they are asleep. Think about it, would a loving God send those who have died to a place to be eternally tormented? It was Plato who invented the concept of Hell. In his dialogue Gorgias he speaks of the eternal punishments, a thought later adopted by the “Christian” Church in the 2nd century. Ecclesiastes 9:5,10 says - “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, . . . for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.” The Hebrew word Sheol which refers to mankind’s common grave is often incorrectly labeled hell in many bible translations.

Yes he gives humans free will. No one is forced to worship him. God give requirements that he wants people to live by, if they don’t they have to live with the consequences of their actions. What kind of consequences well let me ask you, I have freedom of speech here in America, but what if I abuse that freedom by making threats against other people? I have abused the freedom to express myself, if the offense is bad enough, I would be going to jail. So who is to blame for my situation? The government for allowing me the freedom of speech, or me for abusing that freedom and not behaving in the guidelines set down by the government?

Isaiah 45:7 You say that God created evil, I agree First though, you need to look at the word evil as used in that translation of the scripture. If you go back to the ancient Hebrew text, there is no equivalent of the English word “evil”, the Hebrew word ra’ can be translated as bad, gloomy, ugly, evil, calamitous, malignant, and envious. It depends on the context of the scripture. Some translations have the scripture saying, “Forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating calamity.” But evil, calamity, it still means the same thing, and yes God created it. He did so when the first human parents rebelled against him, and he brought down calamity or evil upon them. He did this in the form of casting them out of the Garden of Eden, and not protecting them from old age and death. So is that evil? His enforcing of the penalty for sin, which is basically, death, is an evil, (or calamity) for humans. But this doesn’t mean evil is synonymous with wrongdoing. For example some of the evils or calamities created by God are the Flood of Noah’s day and the Ten Plagues visited upon Egypt. But these evils were not wrongs. Because these were acts of justice against wrongdoers was involved in both cases

[THEWULFMAN]

When Earth was still cooling, it was covered in mist, hence why no one could see the moon or sun. It was after the mist began to part did the objects in the sky appear.

I don't have the time to go into the TAG, as I don't know anything about it. I'll read about it. However, I had to talk about this.

When the Earth was still cooling, life barely existed(first signs of life was 4 billion years ago or so). Complex life didn't exist until much, much later(somewhere between 800 and 600 million years ago, in other words, after Snowball Earth and before the Cambrian Explosion). And when the Earth was cooling, there was no mist, there was little water on Earth at that point. Humans didn't show up until way after the death of 90% of all life, including the famed dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. The moon and sun would have been visible for billions of years. The sun would have always been visible to some degree, no amount of smoke, ash, fog or mist, can conceal the sun altogether. The moon is pretty much the same, although it formed after the Earth did (after a Mars sized planet struck the Earth like an abusive husband. Spewing molten rock from the planet and forming a small planetary disk, whereas the moon formed from this material).

In other words, Genesis is at best metaphorical. Because taken literally, it's [poo]. I don't put much stock in the Old Testament. Leviticus? Yeah, screw that entire book.

[The Master]

In other words, Genesis is at best metaphorical. Because taken literally, it's [poo]. I don't put much stock in the Old Testament. Leviticus? Yeah, screw that entire book.

So you must have been there millions of years ago to be so sure of yourself.

[THEWULFMAN]

In other words, Genesis is at best metaphorical. Because taken literally, it's [poo]. I don't put much stock in the Old Testament. Leviticus? Yeah, screw that entire book.

So you must have been there millions of years ago to be so sure of yourself.

You should not be in this discussion at all. You are like twelve years old. Any arguments you make will either be stupid, or regurgitated from words people smarter than you have spoken.

Narg is right again. Saying I wasn't there, therefore I can't know, is not even an argument at all. It's call logic. You look at the evidence, and come up with a theory that is best supported by that evidence. Which is a helluva lot easier than believing in God and I do that anyway. You were born in what, 1999 or some poo? Get the hell out of this topic.

That, and this,

All I did was post a joke

gives me no reason to give a m'kay what you're saying. You're not someone to be taken seriously.